Something horrible happened to me that affected my high school grades during senior year, failing 3 classes thus ending up with a 2.6 overall gpa (gross, I know :/). Then during the summer I ended up volunteering abroad as a teacher. Now I’m in my first year of community college with a 3.9 gpa, have been volunteering locally and am in 2 clubs, plus an internship. I really want to join a sorority when I transfer to a 4 year university in the fall. Problem is, the very low gpa in high school, the fact that I wasn’t involved in any extra curricular activities in high school, and I have no rec letters. I’m just a little worried because being in a sorority would be so much fun!
I don’t think that you have too much to worry about (but do note that my advice and comments are based solely on my personal experiences as a sorority woman and that, therefore, the best way to be rid of your fears is to talk to people who are actually in sororities at the university which you’re interested in transferring to, if possible):
- Since you’ve been taking community college courses, and obviously excelling in them, your high school GPA should no longer be considered by the sororities that will be interested in offering you a bid.
- I would say that the same thing applies to your lack of high school extracurriculars. Again, since you’ve been involved in college extracurriculars (your volunteer experiences, your club memberships, and your internship), that should no longer matter.
- You would definitely want to do more research where rec letters are concerned. For example, for my sorority, and I believe at my university in general, you don’t need letters (which could only come from sorority alumni - I think that’s the case everywhere) in order to secure bids, although they did make you look better (if they were good, of course, hahaha). But I do know that for other sororities and for other universities in general, you do need letters in order to join a sorority in the first place. In those instances, I’ve seen some people recommending getting in touch with the Panhellenic Council, or PC (usually; the sorority or sororities that you’re interested in joining may or may not be part of PC, in which case you might want to get in touch with the equivalent council instead, but again, you can only find that out by doing your research), of the university that you’re interested in transferring to. Then I guess they would get you in touch with the appropriate alumna or alumni and you would give them information that they could use to write you a rec letter. Again, you need to do more research on this to know exactly what you have to do.
Now, that being said, and keeping in mind that you do volunteer and are completing an internship (especially if you plan on continuing to do one or both of those things once you transfer), know that being in a sorority is very time-consuming and that, based on my personal experiences, a sorority will usually only excuse your lack of participation in their events due to things like work, school, emergencies, etc.
Thank you so much!
I tend to be pretty down on the greek system. I think there is a tendency to put you in a position where you are encouraged to party more than you want to and drink more than you want to. There is a lot of pressure “oh come on, you’re no fun” “oh come on everyone else is meeting for the fire up at my apartment to do shots first.” It’s just not a good scene. So much drinking to excess. So much vomiting. Then laughing about it the next morning “oh wasn’t that SO much fun.” All the community service and “sisterhood” doesn’t make up for it. Besides which, sorry to say, girls can be pretty awful to each other - especially if you’re going to resist going along with the crowd where partying and drinking are concerned. Plus it’s going to cost money.